Articles and Resources

QUOTE: Hospital patients waiting in an emergency room or convalescing after surgery are being confronted by an unexpected visitor: a debt collector at bedside. This and other aggressive tactics by one of the nation’s largest collectors of medical debts, Accretive Health, were revealed on Tuesday by the Minnesota attorney general, raising concerns that such practices have become common at hospitals across the country.

QUOTE: Across the country, dozens of lawsuits against generic pharmaceutical companies are being dismissed because of a Supreme Court decision last year that said the companies did not have control over what their labels said and therefore could not be sued for failing to alert patients about the risks of taking their drugs. Now, what once seemed like a trivial detail — whether to take a generic or brand-name drug — has become the deciding factor in whether a patient can seek legal recourse from a drug company.

QUOTE: Changing course after an unwelcome national uproar, the Virginia Senate adopted a revised bill on Tuesday that still requires doctors to perform an ultrasound on women before they have an abortion, but also says that women cannot be forced to have an invasive vaginal ultrasound....The Senate vote came after a bitter debate in which Democrats pleaded with the body not to adopt a bill that they said remained — even with the changes — demeaning to women and insulting to doctors.

QUOTE: although two-thirds of doctors agree they should share serious medical errors with their patients, one-third did not completely agree. Nearly two-fifths of the respondents said they did not disclose their financial relationships with drug and device companies. And more than 55% of physicians said they often or sometimes described a patient's prognosis in a more positive manner than the facts might support.

QUOTE: A patient has filed a class-action lawsuit against his New York dentist over her attempts to use copyright law to gag the patient's online reviews of her services. Robert Lee, who recently moved to Maryland, has asked a New York federal court to declare that his comments are protected under copyright's fair use doctrine, that the dentist's attempts to gag him breach dental ethics, and that the "privacy agreement" the patient was forced to sign is invalid and illegal under New York law.

QUOTE: In years gone by, doctors would likely have scoffed at the suggestion they reimburse patients for time spent waiting. But Farstad's doctor sent her a check for $100, the full amount she requested, and some tardy doctors tell CNN they give patients money (or a gift) before the patient even asks.

QUOTE: The mere whiff of perceived memory loss can have terrible consequences in an insecure economy in which midlife workers are regularly (and illegally) laid off on account of their age. This epidemic of anxiety around memory loss is so strong that many older adults seek help for the kind of day-to-day forgetfulness that once was considered normal.

QUOTE: With backing from anti-abortion groups, which argue that sonograms can help persuade women to preserve pregnancies, 20 states have enacted laws that encourage or require the use of ultrasound....“You don’t just walk into one of these places like you’re getting your nails done,” she said. “I think we’re armed with enough information to make adult decisions without being emotionally tortured.”

QUOTE: The American Academy of Pediatrics has rescinded a controversial policy statement raising the idea that doctors in some communities should be able to substitute demands for female genital cutting with a harmless clitoral "pricking" procedure.

QUOTE: Doctors and patients alike are accustomed to the firmly entrenched Doctor Knows Best status quo. But it is only by empowering patients... that health care can be made significantly more efficient and effective.

QUOTE: Physicians who are signing out may inadvertently omit information, such as the rationale for a certain antibiotic or a key piece of the patient’s surgical history. And doctors who are receiving the information may not assume the same level of responsibility for the care of that patient.

QUOTE: Since 9/11, pandemic planning has taken a more authoritarian tone that harks back to the pre-vaccine days of forced quarantines during outbreaks, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report...

QUOTE: Several private companies are now collecting patient data and genetic information online to use in recruiting patients for clinical trials, conducting research internally or to sell to drug and biotechnology companies.

QUOTE: The debate over [White House health care advisor] Dr. [Ezekiel J. Emanuel] shows how subtle philosophical arguments that have long bedeviled bioethicists are being condensed, oversimplified and distorted in the griddle-hot health care debate.

QUOTE: There are more than 6,500 cancer clinical trials seeking adult patients, according to clinicaltrials.gov... But many will be abandoned along the way. More than one trial in five sponsored by the National Cancer Institute failed to enroll a single subject, and only half reached the minimum needed for a meaningful result Dr. [Scott] Ramsey and his colleague John Scoggins reported...

QUOTE: A host of studies and reports by academics and the federal government shows that physicians who own scanners order many more scans than those who do not. As a result, Americans pay billions of dollars in extra taxes and insurance premiums.

QUOTE: Does my child really need drugs for ADHD, and if so, is there a point when he or she should stop taking them?...Because drug companies tend to give samples for only the most expensive drugs, once the samples run out, you'll end up paying more than if your child had been prescribed a generic drug.

QUOTE: Now some health researchers and bioethicists are expressing concern at the way socially and financially vulnerable people are being drawn to careers... as guinea pigs in phase I clinical trials.

QUOTE: Clinicians who are unaware of cultural influences may not only miss important medical implications for a patient but can also inadvertently exacerbate an often already tenuous therapeutic relationship.

QUOTE: Department of Veterans Affairs medical facilities do not consistently offer the level of services and infrastructure necessary to properly treat the growing number of female veterans, a government investigation concludes.

QUOTE: For patients with prostate cancer, it is a common surgical procedure: a doctor implants dozens of radioactive seeds to attack the disease. But when Dr. Gary D. Kao treated one patient at the veterans’ hospital in Philadelphia, his aim was more than a little off. Most of the seeds... landed in the patient’s healthy bladder... It was a serious mistake, and under federal rules, regulators investigated. But Dr. Kao, with their consent, made his mistake all but disappear.

QUOTE: Desperate to help their autistic children, hundreds of parents nationwide are turning to an unproven and potentially damaging treatment: multiple high doses of a drug sometimes used to chemically castrate sex offenders.

QUOTE: Two annual government reports released Wednesday show that progress in improving the quality of health care and narrowing health disparities among ethnic groups remains agonizingly slow, and that patient safety may actually be declining.

QUOTE: "I tried being the 'good patient,' " said Mayer, who until illness forced her to retire was an assistant research professor in the school of public health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Becoming difficult -- some, she said, might call it "empowered" -- was her "natural reaction" to doctors who were "incompetent, rude or domineering."

QUOTE: Federal officials who oversee immigration detention said last week that they are "committed to ensuring the safety and well-being" of everyone in their custody. Some 83 detainees have died in, or soon after, custody during the past five years. The deaths are the loudest alarms about a system teetering on collapse.

QUOTE: A study by the Federation of State Physician Health Programs found about one percent of all physicians practicing in the United States are in confidential treatment....Five audits since 1982 found a string of failures. In some cases physicians appointed people who work for them as their monitors. In other cases doctors could easily know in advance when a "random" drug test was going to take place.

QUOTE: Most assisted living centers in the District have not been licensed or inspected eight years after the D.C. Council mandated government oversight of the facilities ...As a result, consumer advocates say, some of the District's most vulnerable residents have been left at greater potential risk for abuse and neglect...

QUOTE: Several health-insurance companies have recently agreed to improve their existing or planned ratings of physicians....Ratings by some insurers have come under fire for giving top scores to doctors who cost the least -- but who are not necessarily the best in quality or the ones handling the most complex cases. In some plans, there are financial incentives for members to pick high-scoring doctors for their care.

QUOTE: The approach marks the first time since the Civil War that attorneys have been recruited in large numbers to represent veterans. The lawyers hope their legal expertise will speed consideration of claims and result in better benefits for veterans, Stichman says.

QUOTE: Yet, even as rates climb among women, health advocates say that many doctors still talk about HIV as if it's a male disease. Some fear that infected women, particularly those in monogomous relationships, may not be tested promptly, delaying diagnosis, because health practitioners view them as atypical patients

QUOTE: Don’t even get her started on the doctors, she said. She has tried on her own to get information from them, only to “get the runaround.” “They acknowledge he has the shrapnel in his body, but he has to prove that it came from Iraq,” she said. “That’s where I blow a gasket. Prove? How’s he going to prove that?”

QUOTE: a legal document known as a psychiatric advance directive, which is designed to instruct health-care professionals, family members and friends about how mentally ill patients are to be cared for when they are incapacitated....In some states the instructions can be revoked by someone going through a psychotic crisis, and in some cases doctors can override a patient's wishes. In addition, some say the documents promote inequality and discrimination by highlighting a mental illness apart from broader health issues...

QUOTE: The debate over Provenge illustrates the highly charged atmosphere that often surrounds new treatments as the desperation of deathly ill patients increasingly converges with the high-stakes intensity of biotech investing in the anything-goes forum of the Internet.

QUOTE: There is a growing push in medical, legislative, and legal circles -- both liberal and conservative -- to recognize an expansive new right that some are describing as "medical self-defense." .... A potential landmark case ... could make access to unapproved drugs a full-blown constitutional right.